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Hurricane Archive

Collecting and Preserving the Stories of Katrina and Rita

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The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University and the University of New Orleans organized the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB) in 2005 in partnership with many national and Gulf Coast area organizations and individuals. HDMB was awarded the Award of Merit for Leadership in History, and is the largest free public archive of Katrina and Rita with over 25,000 items in the collection. Read More.

Items (8462 total)

I moved to New Orleans by myself in the spring of 2000, and soon fell in love with the city while sinking deep roots into the heart and soul of her. At the time of Katrina, I was living in a rather run-down…

The evacuation of my family for Hurricane Katrina was what many people would call a nightmare. Just like many other evacuees, this experience did not have a good start and only seemed to get worse. It all began that…

On August 24 I was at dinner with my boyfriend and his family celebrating his birthday. I received a phone call from my mom saying my grandmother was in the hospital. Three days later my grandmother passed away. In the…

I was the last person in my household to leave for the storm. My mother and grandma had already left. I woke up early Sunday morning to finish boarding up my house and picking up all the lawn furniture. By the time,…

After being alerted that Hurricane Katrina would hit near New Orleans, I left work early and began boarding up the windows of my house in New Orleans East and made the normal preparations to my belongings as I do…

Little did my family know that on August 29, 2005 our lives would be changed forever. We lived in New Orleans right around UNO supposedly the second highest elevation in the city, boy were we wrong. I can…

I can remember it like it was yesterday. I only packed a few things thinking, like all the other times I evacuated, that I would be back in a couple of days. I threw a few pairs of shorts and a couple t-shirts in my…

The morning of August 27, 2005 I was awakened by a semi-panicked mother. I had no idea what was happening since I hadn\'t watched the news that entire week. She explained to me what was going on and told me we\'d be…

The evacuation of my family for Hurricane Katrina was what many people would call a nightmare. Just like many other evacuees, this experience did not have a good start and only seemed to get worse. It all began that…

At four o\'clock in the morning on Sunday August 28th 2005, my family left our home in Kenner, Louisiana to head for Alexandria. It was my first time evacuating, but I wasn\'t too worried. I knew how these things…